1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a system and method for data protection, and more particularly to a system and method for preventing data in a computer system from being accessed by an unauthorized user.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there has been an explosive increase in the use of small, removable storage devices or storage devices for transporting data from one computer to another, e.g., an employee can save their work files quickly on the removable storage device, take the drive home, and then plug the removable storage device into their home or laptop computer to access their work.
Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices are typically used as removable storage devices with their use simply requiring a user to plug or insert the USB device into the USB port of a computer system and within seconds a new drive or removable disk appears on the desktop. The USB drives have become so popular in part because they do not need batteries, provide solid state data storage with long data retention, offer good data transfer speeds, and are durable and portable.
The USB drives may also serve as a key device that allows a computer system to automatically lock itself to prevent data in a computer system from being accessed by an unauthorized user. In this case, the computer system is automatically locked when the key device has been removed from the computer system and is released or unlocked when the key device is once again plugged or inserted. In this implementation, however, after the key device has been removed, the keyboard and mouse of the computer system will also be locked so that it is impossible to operate the computer system for presentation or demonstration.